Does blogging help patients cope with the lengthy and toxic treatment for multidrug resistant tuberculosis? Do humanitarian responses to crises fail to take sufficient account of the plight of elderly […]
Latest articles
Nigel Edwards: Can we keep up with the demand for urgent and emergency care?
The urgent and emergency care system is under severe pressure. Performance on a number of important indicators, including the four hour wait and ambulance handover targets, is heading in the […]
Soumyadeep Bhaumik’s review of Indian medical papers—2 May 2013
People say India is the land of frugal medicine, and a decade ago I would have agreed. But the advent of technology coincided with the rapid growth of private hospital […]
David Lock on integrated care experiments: at last some sensible thinking from the government for the NHS
The HSJ reports that the government is about to signal a series of large scale integrated care “experiments,” which could result in a movement away from the straightjacket of payment […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Celebrating clinical teaching in Wales
We don’t celebrate success enough in medicine. We sometimes mutter, grumble, and gripe, but we seldom congratulate our friends and colleagues on their success. What a pleasure therefore to attend […]
Chris Ham: Medical leadership must move from the margins to the mainstream
A new report from the health services management centre at the University of Birmingham and The King’s Fund, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, provides a comprehensive and […]
Richard Smith: Stop jumping from “is” to “ought”
Last week for the first time I examined a PhD, and one of my co-examiners, a moral philosopher, told us of “Hume’s guillotine” and taught us a lesson that all […]
Desmond O’Neill: Gerontolysis
In an era when didactic teaching in medical education is frowned upon and where workshops and problem based learning rule supreme, it is refreshing to be reminded of the powerful […]
Mary Madden: Should we assume medical devices work until proven otherwise?
Low standards of evidence for medical device regulation in Europe have led to clinical concerns about the potential dangers posed by the highest risk (class III) devices, especially implantable devices […]
Julian Sheather: Francis—the ethical challenge
Medical ethics has positioned itself as a decision making tool, a philosophical spanner if you like in the clinician’s toolbox. For understandable reasons it has concentrated on practical dilemmas: even […]